The gender pay gap is a well-established fact, but not much progress has been made to improve it. In 2026, women still earn 18% less than men. This is despite women outpacing men in higher education qualifications, earning 63% of Master’s degrees and 57% of PhDs. Higher education is supposed to afford better career opportunities and wages, but that simply isn’t true for women.
When Women Enter, Wages Fall
As women move into roles that were traditionally male, those roles lose prestige and pay less. Administrative work is a great example of this gender bias. It is the backbone of many businesses and requires a variety of skills. Such jobs were initially done by men and seen as elite roles. Today, the overwhelming majority (90%) of secretaries and personal assistants are women, and the field is viewed very differently. In my brief stint as an admin assistant, I quickly learned that my ideas were worthless because I was “just the secretary.” Work that was once appreciated has become devalued because it is associated primarily with women.
The core of the matter is that women’s labour is simply valued less than men’s. As the playing field slowly levels out and certain industries attract a higher percentage of women, men suddenly dare not go near them. The threshold is quite low. Once women make up more than 25% of the graduates in a discipline, men largely exit that field. This problem is particularly noticeable in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields. STEM careers that are dominated by women are deemed “soft sciences,” the implication being that they are “easier” or less important. This, in turn, deters more men from entering. The cycle reinforces the misogynistic notion that disciplines like Biology and Psychology are lesser fields because many women work in them.
The state of gender gaps by subindex / Percentage of the gender gap closed to date, 2025
Credit: World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Index 2025 via Weforum.org
Men’s Work is Societally Valued Work
On the flip side, when men enter traditionally female-dominated fields, it lifts them into highly paid, prestigious careers. For example, the first “computers” were women who did data analysis and calculations. The women computers who enabled NASA’s first space flights were paid 40% less than the male computers on the same project. As computer science developed and gained notability as a field, salaries went up, and more men entered. This same trend is seen today when men choose to venture into the “soft sciences” or other “pink collar” careers like nursing and teaching. In those cases, average salaries increase, and those men are disproportionately promoted to positions of leadership. This “glass escalator” is a preferential fast track for men that hampers women in the spaces they’ve been delegated to.
This gender bias double standard requires women to work harder to be successful, only to have those achievements devalued because of their gender. Men are rewarded for joining all fields, being offered higher salaries and positions simply due to their gender.
Devaluing “Women’s” Work Negatively Impacts All
While this devaluation most obviously harms women, it does negatively impact men. Gender stereotypes make things difficult for everyone in fields considered nontraditional for their gender and can hamper their ability to effectively do their jobs. It is detrimental to our growth and advancement as a global community.
All these issues are symptoms of the core problem: how we view and value the contributions of women. It is up to us to reject this bias and close the gap to create a world where everyone can do the work that best suits them, regardless of gender.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/Debbie Mccallum, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr
This article was written by a guest contributor, T. Msiza.
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